Brief Story Line
Teddy Muretto (Frank Grillo - The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard, Beyond Skyline etc) was a fixer who was on the run from people who were chasing him. In order to save himself, he purposely punch a rookie police officer in a small town named Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) to get himself in jail. Meanwhile, a professional hitman Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler - Angel Has Fallen, Geostorm etc) who was after Teddy, managed to be put in the same jail.
Things got further complicated when another hitman named Anthony Lamb (Toby Huss - Dickinson TV series etc) also reached the same location to kill Teddy. So what would happen in this small town police station? Find them all in this action thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Once again, my wife and I were a bit doubtful about the quality of the movie especially when it started with scenes that have a strong B movie feel. The big bold red and blue color fonts of the title and names along with the 70s song did not help either. Anyway, we continued watching and found it to be a bit fun after a while with the introduction of the loud mouth Sheriff Mitchell (Chad L. Coleman - The Walking Dead TV series etc) who provided some comical relief with his continuous yelling and scolding.
But not until Gerard Butler appeared that the movie became much more alive as the suspense was felt when he came inside the police station (my wife was definitely more excited after that). However, for the first half of the movie, there was not a lot of action as it focused more on building up the intensity. And after what seemed like a very long build up, things finally got exciting for me as there were quite a lot of actions which were mostly really violent. With such strong violence and the nonstop swearing, no wonder it was put as R rating in the US, while in Indonesia it was classified for 17+.
What made this movie interesting for me would be watching the lead stars Butler and Grillo in action which were awesome largely because of their vast experience in movies of such genre. Alexis Louder was amazing too as she was able to counter her more seniors co-star. And let's not forget Toby Fuss who was scarily perfect in his psychopathic killer role, plus support roles such as Ryan O'Nan (Queen of the South TV series) as Officer Huber. I also liked the dialogues as there were lots of dark humor & witty remarks among the characters. In addition, if you noticed few small details, you would find out that they would have significance at latter stage. I believe all these were due to the good work of the director Joe Carnahan (prior works included Boss Level which also starred Frank Grillo, Smokin' Aces and few others).
This movie had a bit of unexpected ending as I thought it would play out differently. There was no mid or post end credit scene but its final scene was good enough for me and did not result to different interpretation. Overall I thought it was a cool enough action thriller movie. Despite it's long built up, it still has an exhilarating climax and good ending. It was quite satisfying although if the built up was shortened a bit and have more action, I would have enjoyed it even better. Btw, this movie was highly regarded by critics. So if you like this sort of action thriller film with a simple enough story and having high critical rating, I think you would like this one.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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